Designing for Trust
As part of a futures studies certification I’ve been completing — a continuing education program I chose to sharpen my strategic lens — I’ve been building structured scenarios for civic life in 2035.
My second certification course begins this month, and as I prepare, I keep returning to a core theme that has emerged repeatedly in my scenarios—one that bridges my research with the future of civic design:
In 2035, the most fragile piece of municipal infrastructure won’t be roads or education. It will be trust.
We often treat trust as a cultural or emotional matter. But operationally, it behaves like infrastructure. When trust is weak or absent, everything built on top of it becomes unstable.
For cities, declining civic trust shows up as:
Lower voter turnout in local elections
Youth disengagement in civic processes
Fragmented digital town halls with uneven participation
Political pressure to demonstrate immediate ROI on services
This pendulum swing of apathy or outright aggression is not a trend. They are real-life structural stress indicators.
At the same time, as trust wavers, municipalities are accelerating automation—AI-assisted service routing, digital permitting, automated scheduling, and chatbot interfaces—all in the name of efficiency.
Efficiency alone, however, does not guarantee public confidence.
Older populations may experience exclusion or frustration as systems move fully digital, potentially struggling with access or unfamiliar interfaces. Meanwhile, younger populations—though fluent in technology—still seek meaningful human interaction to build a sense of belonging and trust in local institutions. Both groups demonstrate that community does not emerge solely from optimized digital interfaces.
If every interaction with local government becomes frictionless but impersonal, speed may increase, but at the expense of the very connection that makes a community thrive.
Designing systems without accounting for demographic realities and relational impact can produce services that function well on paper yet fail to strengthen trust in practice.
A faster system does not automatically build confidence.
A livestreamed meeting does not create relational governance.
24/7 digital access does not equal legitimacy.
This is where communication shifts from supplemental to structural.
When communications is treated as output — press releases, posts, statements — it cannot stabilize trust.
When it functions as alignment — clarifying tradeoffs, explaining decision logic, ensuring leadership is calibrated before messaging — it becomes load-bearing.
This trust dynamic, while clear in government, also extends to the private sector.
Consider Eli Lilly and Company.
In a climate of pharmaceutical skepticism and pricing scrutiny, Lilly has leaned deliberately into trust-centered campaigns:
Get Better reframes chronic conditions through dignity and evidence-based care.
Seeking reinforces long-term scientific purpose over short-term messaging.
Healthy Skepticism encourages audiences to question unregulated claims and return to validated medicine.
Brain Health Matters promotes early detection and open dialogue rather than transactional persuasion.
These campaigns are a credibility strategy. They prioritize trust before transaction.
That is the broader lesson.
Institutions can automate services.
They can optimize workflows.
They can digitize access.
Legitimacy, however, cannot be digitized.
In every 2035 scenario I have modeled, the institutions that remain resilient are not the ones that automate the fastest.
They are the ones who design for trust deliberately — across systems, leadership alignment, and public communication.
At scale, trust is not a messaging tactic.
It is a governance choice.
Ultimately, trust is not just a leadership decision—it is the defining one.
